


Bring To Me Honey For Amber

by orphan_account, Psynatural



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst, Dean/Cas Reverse Bang, First Kiss, Forbidden Love, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Kievan Rus - Freeform, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Castiel (Supernatural), Pining, Poetic nonsense, Romance, Sailing, Viking Dean Winchester, Water, shipbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-20 06:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19371661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psynatural/pseuds/Psynatural
Summary: Castiel expects things. He expects the seasons to turn, he expects bread to bake, he expects ships to leak. But 988 in Kiev is a year of changes, including overhearing a little too much from the odd Varangian sailor, Dean.





	Bring To Me Honey For Amber

**Author's Note:**

> For you. (I will write you other things someday; I have written others for you before.)

 

_"Inhuman stars._

_But this hour is ours."_

Octavio Paz, _The Day in Udaipur_

 

I am going to tell you a story. 

A story of long ago, somewhere far away. Let's look back, long past the years, past the decades and the centuries too. There is the temptation to review the past and to assume that what we do not know is blank. That if we _don't know_ about it, it could never have happened. Yes, the blackness of the past, the blank spots of ancient times. Where they sailed off in that wine-deep sea, we scribble _here be dragons_ and wash our hands of it. That is that. It is unsettling to think that may not be true, that there are stories they never told us. Things they did not leave behind. Logically, of course, that must be false. There must be things we do not know, things that were never written down in pen on paper, in chisel on stone. There are things we do not know.

We must ask the question then of them, _what did you take with you?_

So, let me tell you one. Here is a story. Something that happened (and has not been told before). This one, really, is about sailing. About ships and their sails and what we string up the mast. We will begin with a river. (And the forests here too.)

 

* * *

 

 _Kiev._  
_Summer 989._

 

He can hear the hammering and the carpentry. It echoes, even here, far from the center of the town.

He stands at the river. His feet on the sandbar, the water not much further. A handful of pebbles in his sun-dark hand, throwing them to the water, seeing how fast they sink. It's a bit of a comfort, really, knowing that once they're past the surface, they won't be seen again. Past him, not too far away, you can hear the strike of hammer and chisel. He can hear the crash of the wooden statues in the streets, oak against stone. It shatters. Wood is always terribly loud, really. It's a strange and unsettling thing, knowing that when he goes back into the streets, they will look different. The wooddark statues of the gods won't be there, proud against a blue sky. Just this empty space. And in this empty space, upon a rock and out of rock, they are building a church.

Things change. So it goes. He had been at this same river a year ago as well. (He comes here everyday. That isn't the point. He is thinking of a specific day.) 

Why is he here? Well, let’s go back a bit. Let me explain.

 

* * *

 

_One year prior.  
Kiev. Summer 988._

 

Castiel lives in the center of the world. All roads lead to Kiev. Rivers too.

Yes, here on the hilly shores of the Slavuta River, here where the world comes to ask for a bit of cloth, a parcel of salt. Here, where the ships sleep. The Slavuta is the carotid artery of the world, the long vagus nerve up the spine where all signals pass. It rises in the north, in the Valdai Hills, flows south through valleys and farms, forests too, before coming to empty into the brackish waters of the Black Sea. How old is the river? We don't know, not exactly. We do know that it has not always borne that name. We can read from Herodotus that the Greeks had called the long river _Borythesenes_ , named for a minor god. (But that was in the time of the Scythians, we will not go back that far. Later, much later, we will name the river again, call it the _Dnieper,_ in a name taken, strangely enough, from those same old Scythians.) 

But history isn't important.

Let us look at it, as Castiel does when he passes along the banks. Look at it, wide and dark blue, the heavy forests hugging the edges like mountains might crowd a pass. He knows that the soil is good here, that if he digs his hands into the ground, they will come away filled with black earth. The water blooms with green algae in the spring and summer, bits of plankton and rotifers. The fishermen catch pike and perch, chub and catfish. They gut them there, right in their boats, the smell of fishstink like salt and blood in the air. In the spring, there might be sturgeon and herring too. It smells exactly _right._ It nestles in there, the smell of the city. He was born here, he's lived here for twenty-five years, always smelling this same air. 

He sees the longships on the horizon, coming into port. Their wood hulls and their woven-wool sails. Castiel is a shipbuilder and a builder always appreciates craft, so he admires the graceful curves of the ships. That shallow-draft hull allowing for rapid speed across the water, designed for beach landings. ( _Invasions too._ ) See the symmetry of the bow and the stern. No other ships on the water can simply angle their oars the other direction, pull back and reverse direction. The Norse ships are striking. When they come into the Kiev port and Castiel is hired to do repairs, he always likes to run his hands over the beautifully-worn carved pieces of Norwegian pine and Danish oak. 

Despite being in the center of the world, (or maybe because of it) there are many longships he has never seen. Kiev is land-swallowed. The trade ships come through the Slavuta, the river, limited in depth. But there are oceans out there and seas too, wide stretches of unknown water. He aches to know. The sailors tell him that these ships are the _karvi_ , the smallest vessels of the Norsemen. The sixteen seats of rowers, one of the longest karvi. There are more he has never seen, the _snekkja_ and the _skeid_ , the terrifying warship of the _drakkar_. 

Sometimes, he wonders what was the first thing he saw. (A Norse ship, maybe, with its white sails thrown out in the wind like smokeclouds.) Sometimes, he tries to imagine what will be the last. (Another ship, perhaps.) Today, though, today, there's only one thing he can think about and it's so much closer to earth. A burnt memory of the night before, something overheard in a dark tavern. It's an ale-rough voice and hair caught in lantern-light and a fist hitting a wooden table, that ground-out drawl of "I am not sleeping with _Castiel,_ for fuck's sake." 

Castiel had stumbled on the way through the tavern, overhearing his name. _Is this what it's like? Dying?_ Castiel had choked on the open air. He had looked then over at the table, the long and lean form of the sailor, the fire caught in eyes and hair, reflecting from keratin and cornea. The pale catch of light, the smell of straw and salt still sticking to his breath.  _Not sleeping with Castiel._ (Said as if it were absurd, an impossibility. It is absurd, isn't it? It must be.) He had picked a piece of imagined lint from his tunic, the _rubakha_ , deep navy blue as the coming of dawn. He had tried to not turn bright red. Or run away. (He'd only accomplished one of those.)

Worse, he knows the sailor. Has known the sailor for _years._

The sailor's name is Dean Winchester. Castiel's workshop had been one of his first stops after coming into port a few weeks ago. It always is; it always has been. Fifteen years now of this dance, of Dean sailing up the river and down again, his ships loaded with honey from northwestern hives and asking, holding out wide hands, for bits of Kievan amber. Amber torn from trees. Clear sometimes. Clear enough to see the dead things inside. Preserved flies, entombed ants and honeybees. 

"How long are you here?" Castiel had asked this time, still seated at his bench, hands soaked in oil. He hadn’t bothered to rise. Not for this bait-mouthed man. Castiel had felt the itch of wait, waiting for Dean to say _something_ infuriating. It always happens. It always will. Nothing changes. 

"A week," Dean had said. His hand trailing over the wood of the hull.  _Stop touching it. Stop getting your fingerprints all over it. Do you have any respect for this?_

Castiel had nodded, keeping his tone even. "It'll be done by then. I'll come down to the docks with it."

"Cool. Good," Dean had said, "Sounds real good, Cas." He frowns, staring off into the dark back corner, quiet. 

Castiel had hesitated, wondering if he's supposed to keep talking. "Are you - are you staying with - "

"Oh, er, Bobby? Yeah," Dean had said, starting to wander around the shop. Looking at things, picking them up and putting them back down again. He picks up an awl, weighing it in his hands.  _Dean Winchester, leave me alone and put that the hell down._

A nod. Silence. They are not usually silent.

"Lots changing here, isn't there?" Dean had ventured.

"Yes," Castiel had said, had offered nothing else. Dean certainly already knew. The stories have flown wild of how Vladimir had gone to Constantinople and had something of God in the Hagia Sophia. Had brought Christianity back with him, determined to give this gift of the Cross to his city (whether they wanted it or not). So, there is talk of building a church. There had been statues raised to the gods eight years prior. Now, they are being torn down to make way for the skeleton of the church. Taken down and set aflame. Castiel looks out at the sunset. They are strange things, sunsets in fire. How can something so small affect the sky? The visible smoke is gone, there is only this, the smell of fire, burnt wood, the way it discolors the sky. The reds are brighter, the oranges more violent. 

Dean had been looking at him when he looks back.

How long have they known each other? Years now. Dean has been coming with the ships for years. It had been their fathers once. Dean's father putting into port; Castiel's father in the shop. Now Dean sails, now Castiel does repairs. They have never been friends, Dean and Castiel. Dean was always too young, always following Castiel along the road, trying to tag along. “Stay home, Dean,” Cas had said, age thirteen (Dean had been eight), “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He still remembers that day, six years ago, when a horse had spooked. Had darted, throwing Dean from his saddle, down into the river. Castiel, steady Castiel (those eyes like chromium, like the sea), had spread his hands, already grown into an adult at nineteen, had gripped Dean by the shoulder and raised him from the depths. The grip had been desperate against the water, against the current, had left a bruise in the shape of a hand. Days later, watching Dean jump into the river, Castiel could almost see the fingerprints still in his skin. (He had looked at them then, thought of them still sometimes. Had felt a strange loss when they faded, healed away to nothing.)

That was a long time ago. The world is different now. His nose twitches, caught with heat and burn. It smells like smoke. The statues in the town square are being destroyed. Cast down and burnt. The smoke curls up over the city, over the thatch-roof buildings. Over the moon too.

They're pulling the statues of the gods down, putting them onto a pyre. 

The world is changing. (The past is burning too.)

 

* * *

 

_Tell me, have you ever wondered -_

 

* * *

 

_"I am not sleeping with Castiel."_

Later, later, Castiel lays in his little bed, his eyes picking spiders out of the ceiling. Naming them too. 

 _It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter._ Why would it matter? Dean is nothing to Castiel. A familiar sailor, porting twice a year, occasionally coming in to lean against well-polished wood and eye up Castiel's workshop. So what if the lean is too long and a bit too much against the counter, against the worktable? So what if Dean’s hands are long and work-rough and tanned where the sun has touched? 

 _He’s impossible._ Yes, absolutely impossible. Showing up unannounced and making awful jokes and that hard-edged knife teasing. Talking off the cuff about cities and _did you know_ and _guess what, angel._

 _Why would he have said that?_ It should be self-evident that they were not sleeping together. They can barely stand to be in a room together without somehow riling each other up. Castiel frowns slightly. It is half his fault, yes. But sometimes, sometimes the things Dean says are impossible things, sometimes they are just infuriating when combined with that oil grin and that wink and the crossed arms and canted hips and Castiel just bites back, sharp sharp sharper than he had intended.

It is not always his fault. 

What world is there in which there would be a _question_ of finding the two of them in bed together? Who had asked? How had it gotten there? He lays in bed, drifting and thinking, too tired to sleep. He pictures a room and a bed in it, linens and towels there. Dean and that sometimes-hunger that Castiel catches if he looks too long or too sharp (a trick of the light). It is - strangely easier to imagine than he would have expected. _Though that makes sense,_ he thinks. It makes perfect sense. He has seen the other man pressed up in a clutch before, dark curls in his grasp. Glaring at Castiel for the interruption. It had never quite occurred to Castiel that Dean has a bit of a type, you see. For river-blue eyes and sky-dark curls and those soft to the touch. Perhaps that's why the question had been asked. _That would be only natural to wonder then. Though entirely wrong._

 _It doesn't matter._ In that untrustworthy space between waking and sleeping, his mind jumps the wall to _what if?_ Half-asleep, it is not too difficult to think of Dean's skin, the color of polished natural oak. Of his eyes that, if you are close enough, remind Castiel of the river's yearly algae bloom. Castiel has never had anyone in his bed, he's never fumbled his way into anyone else's. It's always seemed a bit of a mess, hasn't it? Clumsiness and awkward petting, confused hands and stickiness. He's always avoided it. Now, suddenly, something else. He tries to picture Dean in the height, eyes slammed shut and face shattered with want like a broken window. Castiel has never wanted to be the brick through the glass but suddenly he is there, in the kiln, being fired for only one reason. He touches himself with disbelief. 

Perhaps, that is it. Castiel has never understood why, when spring and autumn come, when the ships come from the Baltic (with Dean at the stern), Castiel loses all interest in shipbuilding. He twitches to and fro. Out of focus; out of order. He wanders over the grass and the roads, picking at rocks and bark. He loses interest in eating even. Dull thing, food. Who can eat when there is this rollicking to him, this network of bright lights and gooseflesh stealing across his arms and the thick of him?

 

* * *

 

It's the following night when Dean finds him on the edge of the river. He holds the wine bottle out to Castiel. "Here."

“What do you want, Dean?” Castiel's mouth is as bitter as ash and radicchio. He rolls the anger around in there, sour as a lemon. Spit it out, get it out. He can still hear Dean's words from last night. _I am not sleeping with Castiel._ (Said as if they were poker-hot, as if they tasted like battery acid.) 

“Just a drink tonight.”

"Why?"

A dry laugh, humorless. He still holds out the bottle. Castiel doesn't move toward him. "Just go with me for once, Cas? Alright? Can we just _not_ tonight?" The tone of his tired voice. The _can we not fight? Can we take a breath?_

"And just what, exactly, do you expect instead?"

"You could - "

"What? I could _what_?"

"Look, I've got a bottle of wine." 

Castiel sighs. "Yes, I can see that. That's not - a good idea."

"Come on."

"They're talking." (He has heard all the whispers. He is meant to.)

"So let them talk." There is a sound of something, a slam. A boot kicking a tree, perhaps. "Who gives a fuck, Cas?"

" _You_ were talking, I heard you."

Dean does that roll of his shoulders that Castiel knows far too well. The bit of discomfort, like trying to shake molasses off. It sticks to him, this discomfort. "It was just something stupid they were saying. I told them the truth anyway."

Castiel glares at the water. " _You_ don't have to listen. You're not going to be around."

Dean sighs. "Look, Cas, I don't know what the fuck you want from me. You're always like this. You're just fucking impossible."

"I don't want _anything_ from you," Castiel hisses, holding out his hand, fingers asking for the bottle. Dean laughs. Drinks, passes it over. The bottle heavy and cool in Castiel's palm. 

Castiel takes a swallow.

“Yeah, alright, cool," Dean says. "We're leaving tomorrow, you'll be happy to know. You'll be rid of me."

 _Good riddance._ "Are you? Leaving?" Castiel squints off across the river, trying to make out distant points of light. Stars, maybe. Fires, perhaps.

"In the morning."

"Oh."

 

* * *

 

_Stay here. This is all I can give to you. I would offer more if I could._

 

* * *

 

"It's late," Castiel says. "I should get back."

"Yeah," Dean agrees, his voice falling lazily out of the sides of his mouth. He's got that strange look to him, that studied stare. Castiel is used to how Dean looks at him. The calculating glances, the appraising. Dean is a practiced bit of confusion. After all this time, Castiel knows well that his face is friendly, the smile easy. But that Dean never sticks around long, never lets the conversation steer to rougher waters. Castiel is good at watching the carotid twitch and the too-too-steady focus of the eyes, the musclewhip-tight cords of his tensed forearms. 

Castiel pauses.

"Just sit right here," Dean says, "For a bit, alright?" He waves his hand over the ground. Next to him. Close and adjacent. 

"In the grass?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Why what, Cas?"

"Why do you want me to stay?" He pauses, "We don't even get along."

"Yeah, that’s fucking true," Dean laughs. "We don't."

"We don't like each other."

Dean quirks a brow, "That so, then?" 

"Come, you know how we argue, we aren't friends in the slightest. Even _you_ can see that."

There is a very very strange tone to Dean's voice. "No," he says, pausing slightly. "We're not friends." He looks over to Castiel's crossed arms. "I'll make sure they don't say anything else to you though. Friend or not."

“Why?” Castiel and his suspicious glance. Dean shrugs, picking at a leaf, peeling it to shreds. "Dean. It doesn't matter - you said it yourself. There's _nothing_ going on -"

Dean swallows. "Do you want there to be?"

"What did you say?" Castiel hisses. _Fuck you, Dean._ The visceral loathing in his veins like a virus, the rising hairs of his gooseflesh skin. That old betrayer. He half expects to see Dean standing, smiling, leading the Romans in. _Hello Pontius Pilate, here they are._

Dean stares, that frank green, a curl of the lip. A challenge. An invitation. "Do you want there to be?"

_Yes. No. I don’t know._

Want. Strange thing, want. 

The trouble with want is that, where we are considered, there are no rules. We cannot legislate want, cannot carve it into stone. We cannot chisel it into clay tablets or onto a basalt stele in the way of the Babylonians and Hammurabi with his code. Dean is a sailor, coming into every port. He has heard all the religions and their own codes, their rules. The Christians, who have begun building their churches near his own town, saying _thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife._

How do you stop that then? Castiel has wondered. There is no telling a heart. Tell me, have you ever wanted what you were supposed to? Tell me about ache, the sounding out of empty spaces, the echo in the room. He thinks of last night, sitting in the tavern, the smell of ale still sick on his shirt. _I am not sleeping with Castiel._ (The tips of his ears burn red at the thought.)

 _I want you. I shouldn't. You aren't on the menu. You aren't allowed. You are out past fences and beyond warning signs. Keep out. Beware of the dog. No trespassing. I cannot touch you, cannot look at you. You are on the backs of my eyelids, when I fall asleep it is you I see._ (He tries to remember measurements. How tall is Dean exactly? If Dean were to walk up to Castiel, to the too-still man, the too-frowning creature, and gather up a fist of his tunic (the color of the Slavuta, the color of river eyes), where would their sight meet? Would Dean reach up or down to connect the little interval between them, mouth to mouth? He doesn't know. Dean and the open water, the open sea, the forward thrust of the river. Move away, come back again. 

 _I am not sleeping with Castiel._ He winces at the memory. This is not how it should be. _I don’t want you. (I do but it is unplanned. I should not, you are off-limits.) How dare you drop out of a cloudshit sky? How dare you come out of nowhere, with no warning?_

 

* * *

 

_What will it be like? If I know you like this? Will it be worse when you go away? Have you ever wondered?_

 

* * *

 

Castiel’s glare like algebra, like an abacus carefully ticking off numbers, figuring out what might come next. 

"Say it."

"Say what?" Dean asks. He does that thing with his hands in the grass. Pulling at the leaves, breaking them apart in his hands, the chlorophyll staining him with an accusation. Pulling them out by the roots if he can. Pulling at anything. (Dean and his cocked grin, his sly smile. The truth of him has always been in the fingers, the uneasy hands. He's got a liar's smile and honest hands, twitching back and forth in terror.)

"What you're offering." _Tell me what you want. For once. The truth of it. Not what you think you're supposed to want, not what you're allowed to want, not what you think I want. Tell me what you want. The truth of you. Curled up there inside._

Dean swallows. He moves slightly. Castiel throws out a hand to pause him. It catches on Dean's forearm.

Let me tell you about want. This is how it goes. The first hand put out, the skin to skin. Fingertips on a flushred forearm, the hesitation before the fall. Castiel doesn't know, standing here with one hand on Dean's arm, he doesn't know who is supposed to go first. Dean's grass-eyed stare wide and wanting, the sharp horror of terror. _I am afraid of you. I am afraid of embarrassing myself with how much I need you, how easily I will give myself to you._ (He knows, of course, about games. You're supposed to play the game, to play by the rules. Even if you're in bed, even as you say _I love you,_ you never never never show your entire hand. Keep a couple of cards behind your back, up your sleeve. Don't show your excitement, don't say _I'll collapse without you._ See, if you show too much of yourself, you will always lose. They'll know how to score against you. Never show them how to win. Keep yourself hidden; keep yourself safe.) 

"What do you want, Cas?" Dean asks, his hands moving up along Castiel's chest. The desert of his skin, dry and long-aching. Untouched. (Even if he has been touched, long in the past, it doesn't count. It didn't matter, not like this. He is untouched.) 

“I want you to say it out loud.” _You’re always running,. Back to your ship, back to your father. Back to your corner of the world. Back and away again. I want you to stop running. Stand still, stand still, stand still. Be still a moment. For a night._

“Cas,” Dean applies a smile, “I mean, we both know what we’re talkin’ about, right? Like, you don’t need it in - you know, _words_ words. You know what I mean, yeah?”

“Say it.” ( _Let me not be the terrified one for once. Let me see you._ )

“Are you certain?” Dean asks. Castiel glances away, windcolor on his cheekbones. _Are you certain?_ Tell me you are certain. Before this, before the point of touch. Kissing is an epoch, we cannot come back from that. There is before a kiss. there is after. We can go on like this forever, you know, leaning against opposite walls at a party. You will only know I love you by the smile I bite back, by the hiccup of my breath. How I watch you because how could I not watch the sun? We write lying rules about love. _Don’t go off just falling in love with anyone. There are people who are off-limits._ But hearts don’t speak in legal terms. The only law, if you fall in love with someone you shouldn’t, is to not talk about it. 

“I’m certain.”

Dean nods. Looks away, looks back. At the sky. Clenching and unclenching his square fingers. His tight jaw. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

He breathes. “I’m working on it, right? Hold your goddamn horses. Look, buddy, you ain’t fucking making this easy.”

Castiel quirks a dark brow. “When have you ever made _anything_ easy on me?”

Dean laughs. He rubs the short hair on the back of his neck. “Yeah, fair. You got a point. Alright, yeah, so. Er, I want -“

Green eyes and terror and the wide sky, _Fuck._

Castiel kisses him. (It's simple, really. Falling in love. It's always been simple.)

 

* * *

 

_It's worth it, isn't it? To know? About you and I? What we might be?_

 

* * *

 

Some things do not matter when they happen. We’ve always laid down in the grass together in exactly the same way. Our hands have been shaped the same for thousands of years. Adam and Eve, their ten fingers and their two arms each, reaching in the same way I reach for you here, thousands of years later. Still a sky, still the grass (our lungs caught with the breath of each other). Is it today? Is it 988? Is it, perhaps, six-thousand years ago? (A garden in Mesopotamia.)

It doesn’t matter. All love stories are the same.

There is a kiss. 

Dean doesn't still, he is not rigid or panicked. Castiel has wondered over the past day, over and over and over again. Dean's fingers drive into his bicep, the rough scratch of his beard against Castiel's skin. His moan of his, his hard-shut eyes. Castiel had thrown himself over to Dean's mouth but he's the one slowing down, pulling back. He opens one eye slightly, just to make sure Dean has his shut, to make sure that the blush is on Dean's nose too, that the moan is coming from his throat. To keep an eye on the honest-work fingers (to know what is really being said). The fingers clutch, tight and fast. A grip that says  _don't you dare leave me here._

Castiel clutches back. A rush of blood. If he knew of electricity (it has not been discovered yet), he might think of it like watching a grid light up as night falls across a continent. Instead, since he does not know electricity, he thinks of the little shipboards of himself. He pictures his body put together like a ship, each board carefully in place. Dean's hands creeping across him like saltseep, soaking him with something strange and rough. He doesn't know what it is. Grab at it, at Dean's rough hands and his hunger-mouth kiss. This grappling. Desperate as a beached fish trying to breathe. (When you do finally breathe, you always wonder how you have managed before. So he wonders.) 

"Fuck," Dean breathes. They have pulled apart, Dean leaning his forehead on Castiel's. 

Castiel and his wide eyes, counting the thrushes. The blush has gone past his face, his cheeks, his nose. Dean watches it snake like a river down his throat, blotchy and strange, a red algae flush. Across the chest, yes, like a river pours into the sea. 

 _Please do it again. Kiss me. Now, always. Don't ever stop. Don't you dare ever stop. (Stop, I cannot live with this. You're leaving soon.)_ He should have listened, should have listened, should have listened to the knock of himself, out past fences and warning of fire and quicksand. Now, what is there to show for it? Dirt on bare skin, the press of dry grass into his back. He brushes leaves from his hair, dark with embarrassment. _Don’t look at me. You're leaving soon._

"You're leaving in the morning," Castiel whispers.  _There's nothing to be done._

"Yes."

"Do you fight?" (They have never talked about it, what Dean does when he leaves. It is reasonable to expect a fight. The Norsemen have a reputation for war. They are hired by the Byzantines, called the Varangian Guard. Protect the palace; protect the emperor. Sword-quick.) 

"Not usually," Dean says, rolling up onto his elbow to look at Cas. Castiel doesn't turn. "Sometimes."

Don't talk about it.

“Cas,” Dean says. ( _Don’t talk about it._ )

“You could get hurt or -“

“Look, Cas, I could get the plague too, or consumption. I mean, there’s no promise of anything. Don’t worry, angel.”

Castiel shifts uncomfortably. He looks over at Dean, this bed of grass and rock. He doesn't want to think of that. Consumption, the spit of blood into cloth. (The earliest we know of tuberculosis in humans is in the skeletons of a mother and her child, found beneath the water at Atlit-Yam in Israel. Tuberculosis comes into history’s lens eight-thousand years ago. In with villages and agriculture, in with domestication. With stories. Tuberculosis has never left us. Faithful friend, that one. The lesions on the bones had seemed familiar, even millennia later. We scraped the DNA from their ribs, the bones of their arms, the ulna and radius. _Mycobacterium tuberculosis.)_

Castiel may not know how the insidious bacteria spreads, multiplies within us like the Greeks and their foul horse, but we have known the symptoms long enough. We call it _consumption_ because it _consumes,_ eating you alive from the inside out. Hammurabi’s ancient code talks of it. The Yajurveda speaks of it. Even the Bible, newly adopted here, even in this Bible, this old pestilence is not unknown.

_Don't you dare get sick. Don't you dare risk yourself._

He doesn't say that though. Only - “Don’t call me that.”

Dean opens his mouth. Thinks better of it. Nods. “Alright. Anything you want, Cas.”

“I _want_ you not to -“

“Look, I can’t swear to that. I can’t, alright? I _would_ if I could, but it’d be a fucking lie and you _know_ that,” Dean pauses, a frown sneaking through his mouth, his brow furrowed. “If I’m hurt, I’ll tell the guys to dye the sails black. Okay? Then you know to just avoid the ship entirely.”

Castiel rolls his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Cas, have you _met_ me?” (Strangely serious.) Dean pauses, “It smells like smoke, doesn't it?”

“It's the statues.”

“They’re really pulling them down then?”

“Yes,” Castiel breathes.

“Never thought I’d see that.”

“No,” Cas murmurs, “Neither did I.” _It’s a changing world. They're pulling everything down and burning what they don't need. Let me burn the past. Let me build a church on your bones and worship you there. They have told me about angels and rapture and I want to taste it and know it. You might be a prayer. An invocation. I would like to know. Let me try._

"I need you," Dean whispers. Hot breath and curious fingers, moving low to Castiel's hips.

Castiel says nothing. A brush of fingers moves hair from Dean's forehead. It is unfair that, beyond tonight, they cannot touch. Was there a point when it was allowed? It is hard to tell, history is unreliable at best. We only write down what we want to. They've been telling him all this time that there is a single story, quite linear, flowing from God to Adam to Noah to now. There are rules, of course. Immutable, fixed. They have never changed. No, do not take the Lord's name in vain, do not covet thy neighbor's wife, do not fall in love with another man. Very simple.

Always so simple.

"I'll be back next summer," Dean says. "You'll be here. Like, I mean. Wait for me. I mean, don't. I guess I don't know what I mean."

Castiel kisses the side of his face. Just in front of the ear. He says nothing. There is nothing to say.

"Lie down, Dean," he says, pulling Dean's straw-tan body down with him. Pulling down the question-mark mouth and the spilling confession, the wide grasshopper eyes. The two together, the bit of grass. 

Like the first time and like all the times after.

 

* * *

 

_It is always worth it. If we could love each other. Even a little. Isn't it?_

 

* * *

 

Kiev.  
Summer 989. 

 

He is watching the water. Bending and picking out good stones to throw in the river. 

He is picking out good ways to say too too too much. This _I love you. I need you. Take me with you. Don't you dare leave again._

Are you still with me? Castiel and his cast-iron heart, his shipwreck heart. Castiel and the river, bearing back and away again. He has been touched once, he is still terrified. _I am falling in love with you._ The worst of all confessions. It has been happening since the dawn of time, the beginning of all things. We meet our lovers with that instant knowledge. We do not love at once but we know, we know, we always know that there is a spot for them upon our shelves, that they will fit perfectly within. I can exist without you, it will be worse if I am wrong. Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it. 

 _I want you. Come back. Next time you ask me, I will say yes._ Castiel watches the river. The longest minutes in our lives are spent in waiting rooms and this one has no _Highlights_ magazine, no bored newscaster and their cold coffee too. We would invent these distractions later. There are no distractions here but counting the minutes, measuring the space between his fingers. ( _You could fit there, you did fit there once._ ) In his fingers, a piece of amber, waiting to be given away. Traded, if he is lucky. Amber for honey; honey for amber. Nothing important. Nothing the matter here. A simple merchant’s transaction. _(I have given you myself, can I get a receipt?_ )

Ask me, ask me, how do you know of these things? Have you ever fallen in love when you shouldn’t have? It is the same story everywhere, written in all hearts, across all knifescowl frowns.  _Tell me the one about the tomfool lover._ And I must ask,  _which one?_

He pauses, standing and straightening. His tunic caught in wind, his blue eyes sharp. Dark curls wild against his sticky-skin forehead. Look, look out there.

There is a spot on the river. Sails on a ship. Smoke-colored and sharp against the sky. 

 _Wait for me,_ Dean had said.

_Yes, yes, always. I will always wait for you._

 

**Author's Note:**

> A note on the setting: 
> 
> Kiev in 988 was the heart of Kievan Rus, a federation of Slavic and Finnic peoples and states from the 9th to 13th centuries. For further information, please refer to [this article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27).


End file.
